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Ok...so I'm going to take the machine to the geeks down the street this afternoon or so...

Any suggestions on what I should say or ask? Rose, you had some things last night...could you write them down here for me, or in a freepmail?

Did we have the list of phone numbers put together yet?

I have Suzi's, so I'm probably all set...but I just wondered.

Rose gets so busy at work that I'm afraid she won't see your question before you leave, so...

Tell them what you have, and that it seems to be having a problem with the hard drive or the operating system. Describe the way it fails to boot up (with the quick blue screen, etc.) Ask them if they can run a diagnostic on the hard drive to see if that is the problem; if they do and it turns out the drive is the problem, then ask if they can help recover your data from the old drive before replacing it with a new one.

If the drive is not the problem, ask them if they can help fix the operating system, either by trying a fix/recovery or a reformat/reinstall. Again, remind them that you want to recover data from the drive before doing anything that will wipe it out (such as a reformat).

If the drive is still readable, they ought to be able to recover at least some of your data. They may be able to remove the drive from your system and put it in one of their own, copy the data off, and then put the drive back in your system before reformatting it. If they don't have a spare system (but most geeks do) then they may be able to do a parallel install of Windows XP in order to get the system to boot up so that you can copy off the data and then reformat.

Also, before letting them start anything, ask how much they charge for their service! They'll also probably want to know the make and model of your computer and the version of operating system, so make sure you have those on hand (HP whatever for the model, and Windows XP for the operating system.)

Uhm, that's all I can think of off the top of my head... Rose, if I've forgotten anything and you see this, chime in!